Transportation plan, P3s, food truck court approved

Main Avenue is due to become a narrower street with angled curb-side parking.

My apologies for my tardiness on reporting last week’s City Council news. All downtown agenda items were passed without discussion, except for the public-private partnership guidelines — there was no discussion, but Councilwoman Elisa Chan had some questions. There were two items related to Taco Land, and I’ll tackle those in another post.

…

Downtown Transportation Study

As a formality, City Council approved the Downtown Transportation Study last Thursday. It identifies five projects that are being paid for using $40 million from the 2012-2017 bond program. The realignment of Market Street (between Bowie and I-37) is the top project because it paves the way for the Convention Center expansion, but there’s also improvements scheduled for Frio Street (Chavez to Houston), Commerce Street (Santa Rosa to St. Mary’s), Main Avenue and Soledad (Commerce to Martin) and the intersection of San Pedro, Main, Navarro and Soledad.

The Council adopted guidelines for public-private partnerships, which the city calls great development tools because they leverage the private sector when undertaking major projects.

Admittedly, I’m immensely confused if these are the same public-private partnerships (P3s) as Centro Partnership and HemisFair Park Area Redevelopment Corp. (I realize that I defined the types of P3s in a previous post, but now thinks that may have been horse$#!@.)

When in doubt, quote. According to the agenda these P3 guidelines are for (I hate the abbreviation, too) capital projects which include: “buildings or facilities that meet a public purpose; recreational or health services delivery facilities; mass transit, vehicle parking, or port facility; power generation, fuel supply, or oil or gas pipeline; water supply, public works, or waste treatment facility; public building or facility available for public use; and utility and telecom infrastructure installed in facility.”

They also can be used for real estate development on government-owned land, the agenda item reads.

The guidelines are split into two scenarios: an idea’s of the city, and unsolicited projects generated by the private sector. Click on the agenda item to read the specifics, but they’re pretty obvious — they are intended to be based on competitive bidding and transparency as these partnerships are formed.

Whether the partnerships are one-time deals whose lifespans end when the project is finished, or whether they are actual nonprofit organizations like Centro Partnership, I’m still not sure. There’s a distinction there for sure, but even if the distinction is accurate, I’m not sure, for example, what category HemisFair Area Redevelopment Corporation falls under.

But the basic idea is this: the city has only so many resources and funding sources. By bringing the private sector into the fold, some projects might happen sooner than later. Of course, bringing the private sector also means the need for complete transparency, as we’ve learned in recent weeks. And that, I guess, was the point of bringing the guidelines for discussion in front of City Council.

My apologies for boring you (wasting your time) with conjecture. I’ll do my best to provide fact from now on.

…

Mobile Food Truck Court

The rezoning of the vacant property at Commerce Street and Main Avenue, the site of the Wolfson Building that was destroyed by a fire in October 2011, was approved by City Council, paving the way for the construction of a food truck court. I still need to get with property owner Paul Carter on the timetable.